Hospital Capacity Management

1. Hospital Capacity Management There is an exponential rise in the number of patients and number of diseases globally. This is a huge burden to the healthcare sector. Efciency is crucial for promoting better care, controlling expenditure and delivering an exceptional patient experience. Therefore, new technical advancements and innovative approaches in healthcare management systems are bringing drastic changes to the working environment of hospitals and other healthcare facilities. So, healthcare operations management is striving to overcome various barriers and improve patient satisfaction by reducing costs through seamless operations and providing better visibility. For achieving this, many hospitals are deploying Hospital Capacity Management (HCM) Solutions. HCM helps hospitals to better monitor patient services and make optimum utilization of its resources to generate more revenue. It includes ➔ Bed Management solutions for tracking bed utilization rates and managing processes from bed admission to its maintenance. ➔ Asset Management solutions for managing the usage patterns of high-end medical devices and their appropriate usage. ➔ Quality patient care solutions for improved patient engagements. HCM solutions also promote better hospital risk management. HCM adopts a proactive approach for accurate demand forecasting, acuity –aligned medical stafng and displaying dynamic patient fows based on real-time scenarios to mitigate risks. HCM global market growth rate is estimated at 5% between the period (2016-2025).

2. Benefts of Hospital Capacity Management HHCM? Ensures earlier patient recovery and faster treatment routes. ✔ Helps hospitals maintain a competitive advantage in the market. ✔ Enables sustainable reduction in cost structure. ✔ Integrate real-time patient fows with business analytics for appropriate resource allotment. ✔ Reduces the length of the patient’s hospitalization. ✔ Improves better standards and timeliness of care delivery. ✔ Promotes transparency by enables prompt communication between hospital staff, patient and their caretakers. ✔ Decreases patient waiting times. ✔ Shows real-time visibility of patient status and location. ✔ Enables better time management and error reduction through user-friendly dashboards. ✔ Drivers for Growth of HCM The rise in the number of registered in-patients who need long-term treatment.  Need to dispense better patient care and transparency in healthcare transactions. 

3. Enable earlier patient discharges and reduce readmissions.  The requirement to provide timely treatment and effective cure.  Need for integrated and holistic healthcare services and solution in hospitals.  Availability of user-friendly solutions and interfaces for capacity management.  The goal of providing cost-effective care services by optimal utilization of hospital resources for increasing revenue generation.  Challenges Stringent policies and regulations governing the installation and operation of HCM solutions.  The high cost of installation and equipment.  Shortage of skilled healthcare professionals for developing, deploying, utilizing and maintaining HCM.  Strategies for Improving HCM ➔ Right-sizing the hospital based on the space available and patient demand. This must be done only after the hospital has sustained efcient operations for a remarkable time interval and has proven track records. Some departments and units may also be temporarily closed and re-opened based on the patient volumes. ➔ Developing a hospital-wide awareness amongst the management and staff on the need for improving resource utilization and streamlining care to a value- based proposition. This leads to greater efciency and better cost-cutting. ➔ Establishing a robust patient logistic department which clearly tracks the bed occupancy status and monitors the patient’s location and movement within the hospital in real-time. This enables efcient assignment of both patient and staff to different units based on the availability. ➔ Having a clear-cut and consistent communication mechanism for ensuring safe transit and timely transfers of patients between various care levels. This signifcantly reduces the burden of the Emergency Department. ➔ Involving Healthcare Consultants for giving valuable inputs in improving capacity management. Their expertise on in-patient care and hospital case management signifcantly reduces the hospitalization duration of patients.